Colombian independence day is July 20, so on Sunday July 22 there was a huge festival at the Forum Park in Barcelona. Apparently there's about 50,000 Colombians living in Barcelona. It was surreal for me to see them celebrating their independence from Spain while living in Spain. For example, one of the songs talks about a married slave couple where the wife was being mistreated by the Spaniard.
One cool thing about this festival is that I was about to just hang out by the stage watching the sound crew and the performers setup for their gig. The sucursalsa band has 10 people and took a really long time to sound check. So long in fact that the audience was getting restless and loud "ya pongan musica para bailar." The congas were checked first, then the brass section, then the strings. For each section each instrument (mic) was checked independently and then the whole group. Throughout the whole show the biggest problem was with the monitors. It is very noticeable, at least for me now that I've been interested in mixing shows, when a performer is trying to get the attention of the sound engineer to change the monitors. And a lot of the time the sound guy isn't paying attention or is hard to get. Also, the power to the bass amp went out a few times during their performance.
There was a carnival game where you threw bean bags into a clay pit and tried to make them stick. The distance was pretty far so it wasn't easy. I didn't try the game because I ran out of money after getting food. I had arepas for the first time.
I would never have thought there would be this much variety in music festivals, but I'm excited because it fits my varied taste in music.
No comments:
Post a Comment